Netanyahu Warns World to Reject Gaza War Crimes Report

Cautions World Leaders Could Face Similar Charges for their Wars

by Jason Ditz, Antiwar.com, September 17, 2009

While other top Israeli officials dismissed the UN’s Gaza War Crimes report with a combination of the usual accusations of personal bias by South African Judge Richard Goldstone and claims of outright anti-semitism behind the assessment of Israel’s January invasion of the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a surprisingly frank response.

The hawkish Israeli Prime Minister cautioned that world leaders had better publicly reject the report, because they might face similar accusations of war crimes for their behavior in their assorted wars as well.

The UN report cited evidence that both the Israeli military and the Gaza militant groups involved in the conflict committed serious war crimes which might amount to crimes against humanity. Human rights groups say that the vast majority of the roughly 1,400 Gazans killed by the Israeli attack were civilians.

And while the UN report went out of its way to accuse both sides of war crimes, the United States was among the first to heed Netanyahu’s calls, condemning the report as “clearly one-sided.” The US was among the most outspoken defenders of the Israeli invasion.

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Tags: Judge Richard Goldstone, killing of Gazan civilians, PM Benjamin Netanyahu, UN’s Gaza War Crimes report, war crimes